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Astounding facts about Indian Spices

Hearing of spices, we automatically start drooling over all the scrumptious food we have ever had that was prepared using all those spices. And when it comes to spices, India is world’s leading manufacturer and exporter of spices of all kinds. Spices are that one thing that represents India on a global level and makes India sought after. Indian spices are widely consumed and admired for adding taste into the most boring edible items. When we boast about the rich heritage of spices we have, let’s have a look at few amazing facts that even we didn’t know being Indians.

Spices have an amazing world of their own and India is considered to be the heaven of an infinite range of spices. The rich collection of aromatic spices those are sure to add flavour and exquisite taste to your food.

Here, we have a list of amazing facts about Indian spices that you were not aware of:

Different kinds of spices

There are three different forms of spices:

Fresh Spices – ginger, garlic, green chilli, bay leaf, curry leaves etc are categorised as fresh spices as they are consumed when fresh and are believed to be their best at taste only when it is fresh. The spicy taste and aroma out of these can be tasted in their fresh state only.

Whole dried Spices – cumin seeds, coriander seeds, mustard seeds, red chilli, nutmeg, cardamon etc are referred as whole dried spices as they are basically sun-dried and then made ready for consumption. These spices taste best in the whole-dried state.

Roasted and Ground Spices – chilli powder, cumin powder, turmeric, fenugreek etc fall into this category as they are edible and consumable only once they are roasted and ground.

That peppery wonder!

Black pepper is believed to be one of the most precious spices available. In fact, it was used as currency back during olden days. They are of great value even now and are used to garnish all sorts of the recipe and add that hint of flavour to your food.

Spice exporters in India

Since the past few years, export of the Indian spices reached a new high holding 48% share in global volumes. India bags great potential and might when it comes to export of wide range of spices. India is one of the leading spice exporters all across the globe.

India is claimed to be world’s largest producer, consumer, and exporter of spices. Also, export of spices for innovative products like spice flavoured chocolates, fragrances, bathing bars, oils, bars and much is credited to India.

Flipping back the pages of spice exports in India for the last five years, a growth of 10% in terms of the Indian rupee and 5% in terms of dollars has been observed.

During the year 2016-17 alone, around 947,790.00 tons of spices and spice products worth Rs. 17,664.61 crore (The US $ 2633.30 Million) were exported from the country. This marked an increase of 12% in volume, 9% in terms of the Indian rupee and 6% in terms of dollars. Chilli was the highest exported spices from India, around 400,250.00 tons worth 507,075.00 (value in Rs. lakhs) in 2016-17 (EST).